French voters rebel against Sarkozy

What happened

French President Nicolas Sarkozy was scrambling for his political life this week after he narrowly lost the first round of the presidential election to Socialist François Hollande. It is the first time an incumbent French president has lost the first-round ballot in half a century. Hollande’s slim victory over Sarkozy, 28 percent to 27 percent, gives Sarkozy a chance to hold on to his presidency in the May 6 runoff election. But to survive, he has to overcome his own deep unpopularity, and widespread anger over the country’s weak economy and the euro zone meltdown, which has propelled many voters to the parties on the extreme left and the extreme right. The far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, who played to the fears of working-class France with anti-elitist rhetoric and calls to curb immigration, secured an unprecedented 18 percent of the vote (see Best columns: Europe).

As Sarkozy and Hollande furiously campaigned for the losing parties’ voters, polls revealed some discouraging math for Sarkozy. About a quarter of Le Pen’s supporters may actually vote for the Socialist out of disgust, while virtually all of the 11 percent who backed far-left-wing candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon will throw their support to Hollande, who has promised to increase spending to stimulate growth and impose a 75 percent income tax rate on incomes over 1 million euros. Sarkozy warned voters that if they abandon fiscal prudence, France “will be swept away.” Hollande said voters have a simple choice: “Either continue policies that have failed with a divisive incumbent candidate or raise France up again with a new, unifying president.”

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What the editorials said

What an “unenviable” position for French voters, said The Wall Street Journal. They now have the choice of either sticking with the widely disliked Sarkozy, or leaping off “the Socialist cliff without a parachute.” Sarkozy has only himself to blame, said The New York Times. He’s joined Germany in pushing austerity policies that are “sparking discontent” across the Continent. A Hollande victory would signal “a major change in fiscal direction for France” that would reverberate throughout the euro zone.

Le Pen supporters will now decide this election, said The Independent (U.K.). Sarkozy has a chance to win over those who are “motivated primarily by right-wing nationalist, xenophobic policies.” But he’ll need to tread carefully. A blatant appeal to the far-right’s xenophobic instincts “would taint his second term forever.”

What the columnists said

Sarkozy may be a “brilliant” political tactician, but most French simply don’t like him, said Christopher Dickey in TheDailyBeast.com. “Short and pugnacious, intense and vulgar,” Sarkozy strikes the French as more “Kardashian” than national leader. They hate his expensive watches and his rigid disinterest in drinking wine. He’s even called—with great contempt—“Sarko the American.” Nothing he has done over the past year—from France’s leading role in the successful effort to oust Muammar al-Qaddafi in Libya to the birth of a baby daughter with wife Carla Bruni—has had any impact on his “abysmal approval rating.”

That’s a shame, said Pierpaolo Barbieri in TNR.com, because Sarkozy’s presidency has produced “many substantive successes.” He has succeeded in adding “much-needed sweeteners to Germany’s austerity recipes,” and reversed the French government’s long hostility toward NATO and the U.S. Hollande, by contrast, promises to aggressively challenge Germany’s policies to buttress the euro, and to adopt a “more critical stance” toward the U.S. For all of Sarkozy’s flaws, the rest of the world has “little to look forward to from a President Hollande.”

But it’s now Hollande’s election to lose, said Philip Gourevitch in NewYorker.com. He has never held a government office higher than mayor, and he “sells nostalgia for a more comfortable past, without saying how on earth France could now pay for such comforts.” But such details don’t seem to bother austerity-weary voters, particularly those who would support him just to see the back of the unpopular president. Sarkozy may still “eke out a surprise victory,” but as he desperately pleads with “the little people” not to make a big mistake, he sounds like “a man running against himself.”